Ilsa had a moment of panic and started skimming through all she remembered from her lessons. But that was exactly what Fyfe had told her not to do. How would a Whisperer react to a blow-by-blow of how she learned to best them? With those pistols at their hips and a bandolier of blades gleaming on each chest, Ilsa didn’t want to find out.
Wordlessly, the steward in charge placed himself in their path, so that they met him face to face. He exchanged a nod of recognition with Fyfe, who crossed the border often, then looked Ilsa up and down. His eyes weren’t vacant the way Alitz’s were, but they still took on a new sharpness when he focused his gaze on Fyfe, who remained still and stared back at him. After a moment, the Whisperer nodded and turned to Ilsa. She pushed aside her thousand curious questions and tried to speak directly into the soldier’s mind. We’re going to the Oracle embassy to meet with Ambassador Jorn, she tried to tell him, but the background hum refused to die down. What do you see? What does it feel like? Do my thoughts have my voice? If I thought only of your face and your eyes looking into mine would you see anything at all? How can you tell if I’m lying? It felt like they were staring at one another for longer than he’d stared at Fyfe, the steward’s brow knotting with irritation, until at last he blinked away that unnerving sharpness and shook his head.
“The same way you can tell if I’m lying,” he said, surprising both Ilsa and Fyfe. “You read my tells.”
He signalled for them to continue and they hurried past. When they were out of hearing range, Fyfe said, “I think he liked you. Ceric doesn’t open his mouth for anyone.”
“I did terribly! He knew I read people’s tells.”
“He let us through, so he can’t have seen the worst of it.” He frowned. “Do you read my tells?”
“Let’s just say you wouldn’t win a penny ’gainst me at cards.”
He led them through the streets of Whitechapel. Rows of sagging mews on narrow cobbled lanes; tree-lined streets of immaculate white townhouses; and featureless terraces of red brick, all among one another like a shuffled deck of cards.
Fyfe was right; a relentless hush filled the air like a smog of its own. It got thicker as they ventured deeper into the quarter. Birds still sang, leather soles still struck the pavement, a child’s pull-along train still grumbled along with a wooden churning. But the sounds didn’t harmonise to become the signs of a living, breathing city. Each pierced the ear-splitting silence like an intrusion, no matter how small and soft a sound. Ilsa couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched, or heard, and she doubled her efforts to protect her thoughts.
“There’s something you ought to understand about Oracles,” said Fyfe, rubbing his hair. “You’re about to learn that despite all your training with Alitz” – he hesitated, before evidently deciding against mentioning Pyval – “coming face to face with a skilled Oracle isn’t all that less invasive, and there’s no protection to be had. You see, even talented, trained Oracles, like Jorn, have the whole knowledge of the universe to contend with when they See. It can make searching for what they’re after a long, exhausting process, unless they have an anchor. A starting point. Like a person for example. In Jorn’s presence, anything he wishes to See relating to you or me will be at the forefront of his divination.”
But that wasn’t true of the Oracles Fyfe had told her she would meet in Whitechapel. Sure enough, an Oracle man bearing a tower of parcels to the post office came into view. He wore a servant’s clothes and had the lazy, fluid gait of a typical pipe-smoker, but something was different. His steps were sure and didn’t drag. His fingers gripped the parcels without fidgeting. But his head did loll forward like a guilty dog’s, and as he drew closer, his face had an alarming vacancy about it. Ilsa had thought of all Oracle’s eyes as expressionless chasms, until she was looking into this man’s. They had none of the life of Lila or Freddie Hardwick’s. The only people who appeared as absent as this man were dead.
Some Oracles spent years mastering their skill so that it wouldn’t drive them mad. Some dulled the onslaught of eternity with vemanta. And a third group, like this man, gave up their minds to a Whisperer. They lived as slaves, mindlessly compelled to do their master’s bidding in exchange for the peace it brought them. The only thing an enslaved Oracle was capable of thinking of was their work. Their histories, their families, even their own names, all ceased to exist for them.
“But the Principles banned slavery,” Ilsa had said when Fyfe explained.
“And the arrangement between the Whisperers and the Oracles was part of the Principles,” said Fyfe. “Whitechapel wanted it. The Docklands wanted it. They installed Jorn to administrate and guard against abuses and let them get on with it.” He laughed. “That part was your mother’s idea. I believe she said the sure-fire way to know a person is serious about what they’re after is to put a bureaucrat in their way.”
Ilsa tried not to shudder as the Oracle man passed by them, but she recognised it as a death of sorts, and this man was a corpse. All the same, she could understand his choice.
Ilsa had imagined the ambassador’s home as an official-looking building on a well-to-do street; perhaps bearing a flag of the Docklands, if such a thing existed. But while there were poorer districts in London – and Ilsa had lived in some of them – the cobbled street Fyfe led her to was far from upper class. It was permanently shaded by the colourless, three-storey terraced houses crammed too close together on either side. The terrace end sagged, like someone had removed a bookend and the whole row was about to slide. A glance at several windows revealed that most of the houses had been partitioned into flats. If this was the level of luxury that could distract an Oracle away from the faction war, Ilsa wondered what the Docklands must be like.
When they rang Jorn’s doorbell, a bashful servant girl – not an Oracle; probably a Whisperer, thought Ilsa – answered the door and led them to a parlour. At least inside, the house was exceedingly comfortable. The parlour was hung with colourful fabric, and a cluster of ornate brass lanterns hung from the ceiling. Under foot was, indeed, a reassuringly expensive carpet in an intricate pattern of colourful flora and fauna. The room was thick with the cloying scent of rose.
“Is Jorn Moroccan?” muttered Ilsa.
“I believe some of his ancestors were, but Jorn’s as cockney as they come.” Fyfe frowned. “You meant Marauccan, didn’t you?”
“Ain’t that what I said?”
Before Ilsa could wedge the unlikely image of a cockney ambassador from a country she still believed was Morocco into her already shaken expectations, a bead curtain rattled behind her, and an Oracle entered the room.
“Well, if it isn’t Hester’s baby brother,” he said. He was a cockney alright, but a better spoken one than Ilsa. “And this is…” He studied Ilsa, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “So, this is a family affair.”
“How’d you do,” said Ilsa uncertainly.
Jorn was short and broad-shouldered, with lumpy features set into a wide face. His skin was medium brown, but with a cold, blue undertone. Like every Oracle Ilsa had met, he looked like he needed a jug of cream. His gunmetal hair was fine, and thinning on top, but his eyebrows were unconcerned, cutting across his face like unkempt hedgerows in the throes of spring.
He was dressed in a burnt orange robe of a luscious material, and he repeatedly pushed up the sleeves as he crossed the room and scooped Ilsa’s hands into his. She sucked in a breath but didn’t pull away, even as Fyfe’s lips tightened.
“How lovely you are, Miss Ravenswood,” Jorn purred, his white eyes roaming over her. “Truly the fairest young lady I have met in a long while. It would be a crying shame to deliver your head to the blessed Seer.”
Ilsa snatched her hands back, her every muscle tensing, ready to shift. Fyfe warily drew her behind him, but the action only made Jorn laugh.
“I jest, Master Whitleaf. We both know you wouldn’t be here if I concerned myself with the petty interests of the factions.” He crossed to one of the silk-upholstered
chairs, spread out in it like a cat, and sighed theatrically. “I cannot abide all this pretence. It makes me weary. So let’s not pretend my people’s fictitious quarrel with you is anything but.”
“Why?” said Ilsa before she could think. “Why’re they pretending we kidnapped someone when they know it ain’t true?”
“Because you do nothing for them and need nothing from them. In this city, fairest, that makes you their enemy. Please.” He gestured to the chairs, and Ilsa and Fyfe sat. “How may I be of service?”
“It’s a rather delicate matter,” said Fyfe.
“Boy, breathing is a delicate matter in this starsforsaken city.”
“I’m finding that,” muttered Ilsa.
“We’d like to know what you can tell us about the missing Seer’s apprentice Cogna.”
A slow smile spread over Jorn’s face. “That’s not cheap information,” he said, greed flashing even in the emptiness of his gaze.
Fyfe frowned. “We’re not asking for your divination. We hoped, as a fellow Oracle of influence, you would know them, or about them at least.”
Jorn’s expression hardened. He jerked his chin at Ilsa. “You’re new to this city,” he said to her. “Your friend does you a disservice by not leading by example; by trying to grift me. So take it from me instead, fairest. Learn the value of everything, and do not give it away if it can be sold.”
He spoke the last to Fyfe, who narrowed his eyes right back at the Oracle. “I should have known,” he said.
“We din’t bring no money,” said Ilsa.
“Coin is cheap,” Jorn replied scornfully. “Tell me, fairest… who is your most powerful friend?”
“I ain’t sure I know that.”
Jorn laughed again. It was a grumbling, spiteful sound. “It is dangerous to spend too much time with Whisperers,” he said, leaning so far towards her that Ilsa was sure he would fall from his chair. “They’ll tell you all knowledge is theirs for the taking because they can peer inside your weak little mind. It flatters them and it flatters you. Your very own history is vaster than what you’re keeping up here.” He tapped his temple. “It lives after you die. It survives your children’s children’s children and everyone who knew them. And I can See it all. If I want to know who your most powerful friend is, I will search your life and the lives woven with yours, and I’ll decide the truth for myself. You only need to give me your hand.”
If this was the price to be paid, Ilsa wasn’t fooled; it was more costly than Jorn was letting on. His power was formidable, if his own assessment was to be believed. What else might he See while riffling through Ilsa’s history, and her future too, if he chose? Was it dangerous to give so much away? Ilsa’s instincts told her yes, and her past agreed unequivocally. This wasn’t a questions and answers game – it was a piece of herself in exchange for a chance to find her brother. She cast a glance at Fyfe, who shrugged non-committally. It was Ilsa’s call.
“If coin’s so cheap, what’s the information worth to you?” Ilsa looked pointedly around the room. “You din’t do this place up so nice with secrets.”
Jorn gave her an assessing look that dragged on for an age. “You’d never hear an Oracle ask such a question. What is information worth,” he scoffed. “What is knowledge worth. You have no idea how little you understand, girl. You want to know what I will earn from your information? Something to pay for my silk and tobacco? For all my heart’s desires? Lovely” – he spread his hands wide – “knowledge is what I desire. It’s the most valuable thing on this earth, and here I am, giving it away for free.”
“So you ain’t gonna tell nobody what you learn from me?”
Jorn sat still as a cat, and he smiled. “I make no such promises.” Ilsa let out a sigh of exasperation, which Jorn dismissed with a hand. “I’ve given you my terms. And I’m very close to concluding that you’re here to waste my time. So what’ll it be?”
Ilsa was less sure than ever, and yet she knew what she would do. She had known it before Jorn set his terms; before she stepped through the door. Jorn was calling her bluff, because nobody needed an Oracle’s Sight to see how she was growing desperate to catch up with her brother.
“Alright.”
Jorn took her offered hand and bowed his head in concentration. There was silence as he pried through her life; a silence in which Ilsa and Fyfe tried to wait patiently, but soon resorted to making mocking faces and rolling their eyes at one another.
“Well?” said Ilsa when Jorn’s gaze re-met hers.
“Illuminating.”
“Who is my most powerful friend?”
“Young lady, do you want the answers you came for or the answers to my questions? We will be here a very long time and learn a great deal about one another if it is both.”
She bit back her exasperation as Jorn resettled in his chair. “So, you want to know about Cogna.”
“We don’t even know if they’re a man or a woman,” said Fyfe.
“Cogna is a child.” He left a long pause to relish in his guests’ surprise. “Neither a male nor a female child. They were born with a sex, like all of us, but they shed it like a snake sheds its skin. No use of it.”
“How old?” said Ilsa.
“Thirteen, I believe.”
Fyfe furrowed his brow. “How could a thirteen-year-old have mastered their talent?”
“Steady now. I have a question for you, boy.” His mouth curved cruelly as he studied Fyfe. “I would like to know about your first kiss,” he said, his tongue darting out to wet his lips.
“And what’s the use in you knowing that?” said Ilsa.
“Pay or don’t pay. That’s my price.”
Glowering, Fyfe extended a hand to Jorn. The touch was brief; the smile that spread across Jorn’s face, feline. “No? A dashing boy like you?” Fyfe let out a slow breath, but it did nothing to calm the blood rushing to his face. “You’re young. There’s time. Don’t despair.”
“Cogna,” prompted Ilsa. The word came out more forcefully than she intended.
“Yes, yes. Some think Cogna’s a god; others, a mere genius. We all develop early mechanisms to control our Sight to some degree; the strong of mind have more success than the dim, of course. Cogna’s control was powerful from the first. They sailed through the training. An unusual choice for the seership, I must say, but I believe it was thought to be the only way of controlling the child.”
“What do you mean?”
Jorn turned his attention to Ilsa. “What is the closest you have ever been to death?” Jorn asked. Ilsa was already holding out her hand.
He took it, and the wait was even longer this time. To distract herself from thoughts of days on end without a morsel of food or lashings that cut too deep, Ilsa hazarded a glance at Fyfe. His blush was giving way to a look of irritation to rival Eliot’s.
Jorn’s brow creased; it might have been sympathy. “Death is a dear friend of yours, it seems.”
“I like to think of him as an unwanted admirer.”
A laugh. “He’ll win you eventually,” the Oracle said. His gaze roamed over her again and she shuddered. “Cogna is an omnic.”
“A what now?”
Fyfe shook his head. “I’ve never heard of an omnic.”
“Because they are incomparably rare. Cogna is the first born in the city, or in Albia, or on the whole continent I would wager. An omnic Sees not only the future as it might be, but all possible versions,” said Jorn, spreading his arms wide.
“Don’t that defeat the purpose of a plain old Oracle?” said Ilsa. “Multiple futures and all that? I mean, I can see multiple futures. In one, Fyfe and I leave here happy because you’ve been helpful. In another, I smash your face in.” She smiled. “All hypothetical, ’course.”
Fyfe leaned towards her. “Didn’t we talk about not handling yourself?”
“It’s philosophy, Fyfe, it ain’t fighting.”
“No, she’s right,” said Jorn. “Put an omnic among the rest of us, and our Sight becomes la
ughable.”
“But you can still know the future, even as it changes, and Ilsa and I can only guess at it. What use is it to see all the outcomes that never come to pass?”
Jorn raised a hand and slowly curled it into a fist. “Control. An ordinary Oracle Sees only an eventuality, malleable and abstract. They cannot say what will change that eventuality, nor how. But Cogna – Cogna knows how to bring the future they want into being.”
Ilsa resisted the urge to glance at Fyfe. What eventuality was Cogna seeking by joining forces with Gedeon?
“It is why other Oracles cannot See the apprentice. The world around Cogna – its possibilities – shifts as Cogna does,” said Jorn, his white eyes narrowed at Ilsa. “It is the reason you are alive, fairest.”
Again, Ilsa’s mind went to her many brushes with death. “I weren’t even in the Witherward ’til a few weeks ago. What does Cogna know of me?”
“A good question. Perhaps your companion can help me answer it.” His gaze snapped to Fyfe. “Tell me, what were the last words spoken to the one you love?”
Ilsa snorted. “Bleeding hell. That’s really what you want to know most?”
“What can I say? I appreciate a mess.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, but Fyfe stared levelly at Jorn.
“There isn’t anybody,” he said. It was a lie.
“Let me be the judge of that.” Jorn extended a hand and, reluctantly, Fyfe took it.
Ilsa wondered idly, if she could look through all of Fyfe’s days and nights, whether she would be able to tell who it was he pined for. Yet it didn’t matter. Whatever was in Fyfe’s heart, he hadn’t shared it freely, so Ilsa didn’t want to know. She was just about to intervene, to propose some other secret, when the men disconnected, and Jorn raised his head. His grin was gleeful.
“You’re not his type.”
“Is this the price? Amusing you?” snapped Fyfe. Abruptly, he was on his feet. Ilsa followed. “If you would answer our question we’ll be on our way.”
Jorn continued to grin, and casually crossed his legs. “We have always known of you, Ilsa Ravenswood,” he said, even as his eyes stayed on Fyfe. “It would take more than the fabric between dimensions to keep you from the Oracles. It was Cogna who triggered the series of events that led to your attempted murder that night, as you know. But it was also Cogna who told the Changelings you were alive.”
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